


In Case of Emergency

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Hard to be soft, tough to be tender [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cancer, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:48:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Leo turns two, they bring him to the seaside for the day, just the three of them. Willas sits on the sand and builds sandcastles with him (for him, really, because Leo is more interested in squelching sand in his tiny hands than in making anything with it), and Sansa puts on his armbands and brings him out to paddle in the sea, and he shrieks in delight every time she swoops him up high, high over a wave.</p><p>Leo is sick, you see, and Sansa doesn't really care about making her dates work or dealing with Willas until he's better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Case of Emergency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anirac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anirac/gifts).
  * Inspired by [What to expect when you're expecting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/863209) by [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft). 



> I promised I'd do this, so... Here we are?

It goes something like this.

Sansa arrives home from one more unsuccessful date, tired and out fo sorts. She finds that Willas has waited up for her, even though she told him not to, told him that she wouldn't be home until late.

She hasn't been late yet, but that's beside the point.

Willas pours two glasses of the sweet white wine she likes, even though he prefers a fuller bodied red. They go into the sitting room, and put  _Swan Lake_ playing quietly in the background as Sansa regales Willas with tales of her unlucky suitor. They finish the bottle of wine and close up for the night, making sure the doors are locked and the alarm is on.

They go upstairs. They fuck. Willas asks Sansa to marry him, and she says no. The next morning, they get up and get ready for work. They wake Leo, get him ready for the child minder's arrival, and when Jeyne gets there, they drive to work together.

They never discuss proposals or refusals or men who look at Sansa like she's some kind of exhibit in a zoo because she lives with the father of her child but dates because she's not  _with_  the father of her child. Even though she lives with him. All the time.

Rinse and repeat.

 

* * *

 

When Leo turns two, they bring him to the seaside for the day, just the three of them. Willas sits on the sand and builds sandcastles with him (for him, really, because Leo is more interested in squelching sand in his tiny hands than in making anything with it), and Sansa puts on his armbands and brings him out to paddle in the sea, and he shrieks in delight every time she swoops him up high, high over a wave.

Leo is sick, you see, and Sansa doesn't really care about making her dates work or dealing with Willas until he's better.

 

* * *

 

Leo was just shy of eighteen months old when he was diagnosed, and Sansa had been on the verge of packing everything in - dating, social life, work - to look after him, but Willas stopped her.

He'd said she'd go mad, and looking back, she knows he was right. That doesn't make leaving her baby with someone else all day, even if that someone has been her friend for years and years, any easier. She trusts Jeyne Poole with her son more than anyone except Willas and maybe Arya, but that doesn't mean she's not sick with fear and jealousy that Jeyne gets to spend so much precious time with Leo that Sansa doesn't.

That's why Willas encouraged her to go on her dates, she thinks, at least up until very recently, because they have to keep things Normal. Sansa had started going on dates when Leo was about ten months old, just because staying in with Willas constantly and, when she went out with friends, listening to thinly veiled comments about how much sense it would make for her and Willas to "make it official" was  _suffocating._

 

* * *

 

Sansa doesn't like it when Willas' grandmother visits, because she always draws attention to how frail Leo is, to his shiny bare scalp and his too-big eyes above his hollow little cheeks, his spindly hands. Leo doesn't really understand, thank God, but Olenna does it so much that it upsets Sansa, and Leo is nothing if not receptive to her moods, which means he gets upset too.

The  _last_ thing Leo needs is to be upset, which is why Sansa asks Willas to tell his grandmother to stay away.

She's getting to the stage where she doesn't want  _anyone_ coming to visit, because all anyone seems to do anymore is sigh unhappily and stroke Leo's head and look at him as if the next time they see him, he'll be in his coffin. Willas doesn't seem to understand it, but he accepts it and helps her keep Leo away from everyone who's given up on him, because Willas is just as sure as Sansa that their son  _will_  come through this.

 

* * *

 

_It looks like the chemo alone won't be enough, but there is something we can do. What do you know about stem cell transplants?_

Sansa doesn't know anything about stem cell transplants because she's always been terrible at anything sciencey and avoids it at all costs, but Willas' jaw goes tight and his face goes pale, and he holds her hand as the paediatric oncologist in his neat white coat with his slicked black hair explains that ideally, the stem cell donor is a sibling of the recipient.

Sansa cries that night, after they've tried for the first time. If this doesn't work, if Leo was a fluke...

 

* * *

 

Willas deals better with Leo's frequent hospital visits that Sansa does herself, even if she hates admitting it. It's true, though, because she can't stand seeing her little man hooked up to machines and monitors, and just wants to take him away from all of it.

That's not to say Willas enjoys it, of course - he's always pale and his hands start to shake as soon as he has Leo strapped into his car seat, but he pushes through because _one_ of them has to. Sansa is better at sitting up at night when Leo's too sick and sore and cranky to sleep, and Willas is better at the hospital, and that's that.

Sansa can never quite make herself sit with Leo during chemo, because it's so  _hard,_ and the doctors told her that she cannot, under any circumstances, stress herself out now.

It would put the baby in danger, and if she loses the baby she loses  _both_ her children, and she won't do that.

 

* * *

 

Robb and Jeyne, his Jeyne, have barely spoken to Sansa since everyone figured out that she's pregnant, and why the pregnancy came at such a fortuitous time.

She knows that it must be hard for them - Leo couldn't have been more accidental, and then when they wanted another baby,  _needed_ another baby, it only took a couple of months, whereas Robb and Jeyne had struggled to conceive Edwyn, who's still an only child despite six years of striving to give him a little brother or sister - but there's Tyrion and Tysha, too, and they both accepted it and have been nothing but supportive, and they don't even have a child to ease the hurt.

The new baby is a boy, too, and they've decided to call him Daryn. They've done their best to explain to Leo that he's going to have a new brother soon, but Sansa isn't sure he understands.

 

* * *

 

Sansa finds Leo's ultrasound photos when she's looking for a pair of earrings she promised to lend Arya, and she spends an hour crying because if this doesn't work, if something goes wrong, then these and his tiny little shoes and the hundreds of photos her and Willas spend every minute taking, because they never know when they're going to run out of time to take more, they're all she'll have left of him.

Willas finds her, when he gets home from work, after checking in on Leo. He slides down the wall beside her, and even though she knows it has to be hurting his bad leg she can't help but crawl into his lap and bury her face against his neck and cry harder, because he's the only person in the world who could possibly understand what the thought of losing Leo, the most wonderful being in existence, is doing to her.

 

* * *

 

Leo is rushed in when Sansa is eight-and-nearly-nine months pregnant, and she's right on the verge of calling her obstetrician and demanding that she induce labour when Leo's doctor comes out to where he made her and Willas wait, reassuring them that it wasn't that abnormal, that it happens sometimes to kids as young as Leo, kids who are going through treatment as intense as Leo's.

That doesn't mean that Leo having a seizure in her arms as Willas read his favourite story wasn't the single most terrifying thing Sansa has ever experienced.

 

* * *

 

Leo has to stay in hospital after that, and seeing him light up every morning when she walks in the doors (Willas and the doctors refuse to let her stay the night "in her condition," and it breaks her heart to say goodnight every evening because what if something goes wrong?). She and Willas are both on leave from work, so they take it in shifts - she does the days, he does the nights, and they make it work. It has to work, because Leo needs them and that's all that matters.

 

* * *

 

She goes into labour while reading a Thomas the Tank Engine book to Leo, with Arya sitting on the other side of the bed, drawing cartoon animals of all the doctors and nurses for Leo to colour in. She lets the nurses know, calls Willas, and waits through the early, far apart contractions, waits until Willas arrives to sit with Leo, and then she lets Arya help her into a wheelchair and lets herself be wheeled down the the delivery suites.

Arya stays with her the whole time, and tells her she's being a fucking idiot when she has a moment of hazy, drug-fuelled panic over Daryn's hair being red like hers, not brown like Leo and Willas', and will that mean he's not a match?

 

* * *

 

Leo's not strong enough for the surgery for almost six months, but he gets home and is completely fascinated by Daryn, who's the first person Leo has ever met that's smaller than he is.

Being happy - really happy, in the way she hasn't been since Leo got sick - makes the time whizz by, and before Sansa can get her head straight she's buying bright blue pyjamas for Leo and slippers shaped like dragon feet and then she's helping him into them while Willas sits on the end of the bed with Daryn, and she's telling Leo to be brave, like she knows he is, and she's kissing him and Willas is kissing him and Willas is holding her by the waist so she can't get in the way when Leo starts crying because he doesn't like needles, especially ones that have to stay in.

 

* * *

 

The chairs in the hospital are horribly uncomfortable, and Sansa is torn between worrying about Willas' leg and being jealous of Daryn's carry tot, because it looks incredibly comfortable.

Worrying and being jealous keep her from falling apart, because Leo is upset and sore, and he's covered in big itchy hives and she had to put _mittens_ on him to stop him from scratching. He's so delicate, and if he breaks the skin he's almost guaranteed an infection, and he does  _not_ need that..

Leo's aunts and uncles and grandparents drop by as often as they can - Mum and Dad swap out night with Mace and Alerie, looking after Daryn so Sansa and Willas can stay at the hospital.

 

* * *

 

They start the infusion after four days of chemotherapy, and Leo's so tired that he doesn't even stir when they plug him in.

 

* * *

 

Six months later, Leo walks out of the hospital on his own, his hair neatly combed exactly like Willas', holding tight to Sansa's hand.

"Doctor said I'm  _all better,"_ he said brightly, tugging on Daryn's foot, smiling up to his little brother. "We get 'scream, Darry!"

"No ice-cream before dinner," Willas chides, but he's smiling so wide that there's no chance of the mood dipping even a tiny bit. Sansa's so happy she thinks she could fly, so she swings Leo up into the air and spins him around and around and around, laughing so hard she can't breathe.

 

* * *

 

(That night, there are two glasses of the sweet white Sansa likes, and Swan Lake in the background, and a proposal that doesn't get a no, just a  _not yet._ That's more than enough for now.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [No who cares, no vacant stares](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1652324) by [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft)




End file.
